Lost: 4.10 “Something Nice Back Home”


“Papa, can you hear me?”

This week’s episode boasted more of a story and less mystery than last week’s (thank goodness for that… my head is still hurting from that one), and two major storylines of the future are starting to evolve. In the one corner, we have the Hurley/Jack/Kate/Aaron story, with Sun on the periphery of that one, and in the other corner, Sayid and Ben. Both stories are important, but I think the Sayid/Ben stories are going to point to the essential physical mystery of the island, where the Jack/Kate future stories will hinge more on the rescue itself and what happened to the rest of them. This episode had its devastating revelations (Rousseau really IS dead… waaaaaaaaah!) and some very happy happy happy ones (Sawyer is NOT dead… and maybe Jin isn’t, either!) Jaters will be very happy about this flashforward, but what about another (albeit it) short-lived ship? Sclaire, anyone?

Nah, doesn’t work for me, either.

Why Jack? Why Now?
Rose has a good point: Why DID Jack get sick? The island heals people like Locke and Rose, but Jack has gotten sick. Similarly, women who are trying to have babies get sick and die, preventing the baby from being born. I’m thinking the island does somehow stop people from doing their own thing here. Jack wants to leave, the women want to bring more people into the world, and onto the island. Does this come back to Jacob? Christian?

Onward Christian Soldier…
So what’s the dealio with Christian? Is he dead? Is he alive? Until now, I’ve been pretty convinced that he’s alive. But now “death” seems like a temporary or ephemeral thing when it’s related to the island. Could he have died and the island has given him a ghost-like existence? When Jack sees Christian in the lobby, the other doctor comes up behind him and she clearly doesn’t see anything there. In “White Rabbit,” when Jack thought he saw Christian on the island, Vincent also saw him. Dogs have a sixth sense, people believe. And… so does Miles. He tells Sawyer he saw Claire talking to a man, but he could have been seeing the ghost, since he can do that sort of thing, and maybe he didn’t realize Christian was a ghost and not a man. Why is he important to the island? Why was he in Jacob’s cabin? Charlie died on the island, and now he’s appearing to Hurley and telling him things, just like Christian is appearing to Jack and Claire. Has Charlie been somehow absorbed into the same place as Christian?

Timeline:
We’ve discussed this before, but once again we’re back to trying to figure out a timeline for all of this. So far here’s what I’ve got:
• Current island events are at the end of December 2004.
• The first flashforward after the rescue is Sun’s. If she’s over two months pregnant now, then she conceived in October, and her Ji Yeon was presumably born in June 2005 (she’s due in July, but she acts surprised when the labour starts, so I’m running under the assumption the baby comes a little early). Hurley seems fine when he comes to see her.
• Kate’s flashforward seems to come next, because one would assume a murder trial wouldn’t sit around for a few years. At that time Jack doesn’t want to see Aaron.
• Hurley’s flashforward is probably concurrent with Kate’s: Jack is living in an apartment and not with Kate (we see him making a drink while watching Hurley on the television), and Hurley’s starting to unravel. Jack seems cool when he comes to see Hurley.
• In this flashforward, Hurley has completely unravelled, and Aaron looks the same age he was during the trial, so it’s probably very soon afterwards. BUT… we get a timeline indicator on this one. Jack picks up a newspaper and the headline screams “Yankees bludgeon Red Sox in series sweep.” I’m assuming that’s referring to the August 2006 series between the two, where the Yankees destroyed the Sox (Jack mutters, “A Rod,” referring to Alex Rodriguez) in a five-game series. But that would make Aaron about 20 months old, and he looks pretty big for a 20-month-old (he looks more like 3). Still, if it’s just chalked up to bad casting, then the timeline makes sense.
• Jack’s second flashforward, where he’s gone off the deep end and Kate’s left him, is in April 2007, according to the date on the obituary that Jack sees. Of course, that could be a production error, but the prop department has been more vigilant with things like that in the last year or so.

Highlights:
• Rose to Charlotte: “Watch your mouth, RED.”
• Sawyer ordering Miles not to look at Claire while she’s feeding Aaron, and putting a restraining order against him. HAHAHA!
• Jin’s still got it! Loved him threatening Charlotte like he was handing down a threat from Paik. But at the same time, he’s basically setting up the reason why he won’t get off the island.

Biggest “GASP!” Moments:
• Rousseau really is dead. I can’t believe it. The death of a character on this show obviously doesn’t mean the end of that character, but I was really looking forward to her flashback. I suppose they could still do a flashback of her through a Ben flashback or an island flashback or… something. But I’m not sure it would be the same. R.I.P. Rousseau. After 16 years of hiding in the jungle, you finally came out, and you got your daughter back. At least she died…. um… happy is not the word I’m looking for… content?
• Did you ever play that game “Definition of Pain” when you were a kid? “Okay, okay, I’ve got one… jumping off the CN tower, landing on a 50-foot long razor, sliding down it, and dropping off the end into a vat of peroxide!” Um… I think “Finding out your appendix is about to burst while on a deserted island and deciding to stay awake during the surgery as it’s being removed in less-than-sterile conditions” just might trump that one. Good god.
• Sawyer “chose” to stay on the island, which means he’s still alive. Which means… we’ll get flashforwards for him and all the others who stayed behind! I’m assuming this will be where seasons 5 and 6 go.

Hurley’s Numbers:
Jack’s patient, Ryan Laker, has a tumour on his L4. Ryan is 36 (8 x 4 + 4). Sawyer tells Miles to keep 20 feet away from Kate (8 + 8 + 4).

Did You Notice?:
• The episode opens on Jack’s eye. We haven’t had one of those openers in a long time.
• Jack walks into the kitchen, steps on Aaron’s Millennium Falcon toy, and says, “Son of a bitch!” the same way Sawyer would have done. Later, when Sawyer tells Miles to stay away from Claire, Miles says, “What are you, her big brother or something??” When, in fact, Jack is her big brother. It was like a sly role reversal of the two.
• When Kate is first talking from the shower, she sounds just like Juliet.
• Jack is reading from Alice in Wonderland to Aaron. Where Ben is aligned with The Wizard of Oz, Christian Shephard is always paired with the Lewis Carroll books. The first time Jack sees Christian after Christian’s death is in the first full-episode Jack flashback, “White Rabbit.” “Through the Looking Glass” was also a Jack flash. Is Jack in Wonderland? And Ben is in Oz?
• Jack reads the part from the book where Alice is wondering if she’s somehow woken up a different person.
• In Aaron’s room, there’s a quilt draped over the chair Jack is sitting on, with a dinosaur standing next to a palm tree on it.
• Sun seems to have forgiven Juliet for blurting out her secret to Jin only a couple of days earlier.
• Daniel says that he’s done some animal autopsies… apparently Eloise wasn’t the only rat who met an unfortunate end.
• In the flashforward scene where Jack first sees Christian walking through the hospital lobby, a woman comes behind him and hands him an x-ray of a patient, saying there’s a problem with the L-4 of his spine. That’s exactly where Ben’s spinal tumour was.
• Hurley says to Jack that Charlie’s told him “You’re not supposed to raise him, Jack.” This brings back what Claire was told in “Raised by Another” by the psychic, that Aaron must be raised by her, and not another. (But then again, one would think that prediction would also refer to Kate.)
• In season 2, when we see Hurley in the institution, it seems to be right downtown, with lots of cars going by. But now, it’s an out-of-the-way place in the country. (Similarly, Jack’s hospital looks completely different, but we could assume he’s in a different wing.)
• As funny as Miles’ restraining order was, I think he’s the ONLY person to have ever offered to help Claire carry Aaron. She’s constantly lugging that child through day-long walks across the island, by herself.
• Jack is obsessed with fixing things, but all he ever does is mess them up.
• Despite hating Charlotte, Jin must have felt a bit of a thrill hearing someone else speak Korean on the island, aside from Sun.
• Bernard applied the freezing the way a dentist would, with lots of little needles around the spot. Which is appropriate, since he was a dentist.
• When Christian is sitting in the lobby, he’s wearing the same suit, tie, and white tennis shoes that he was wearing when Jack spotted him in the jungle in “White Rabbit.” (Incidentally, it’s the same suit he’s wearing when he’s sitting in Jacob’s cabin.)
• Jack tells Kate that he saved her, so his testimony at the trial is exactly what we thought it was: HE was the hero, and he made Kate out to be one.
• Jack shouts to Kate that she’s not even related to Aaron… by that comment, I think it’s safe to assume he knows that HE is.

So Many Questions...
• Kate tells Jack she’s happy he changed his mind about being around Aaron. What changed his mind? Why did he not want to be around Aaron initially? Is it because he knows it’s his nephew, and it’s too difficult for him to look at him? Or is it something bigger?
• Jack clearly knows it’s his appendix, so why is he so boneheaded as to just ignore it and hope it’ll go away?
• When Claire is walking through the jungle with Miles and Sawyer, she says “At least I’m not seeing things anymore.” What does that mean? Has she acquired the same clairvoyance that Desmond has? Speaking of which, where the hell is my Desmond??
• Who buried Rousseau and Karl?
• Sawyer’s barely given Claire a second look the entire time they’ve been on the island. What’s changed in him that’s suddenly made him her 24-hour superhero? (I’m not saying I don’t love watching it…)
• Juliet tells Jack she’s done a lot of appendectomies, but he doesn’t trust her. Is there a small part of him that still mistrusts Juliet because she’s one of the Others? Or is he totally Type A? (My money’s on the latter.)
• Why was Frank running so far ahead of Keamy when they were heading back to the chopper?
• Why does Charlotte know Korean? It’s not necessarily a language an Australian archaeologist would know.
• What favour was Kate doing for Sawyer when she was out of the house? Did it have something to do with Clementine?
• Is this how Claire is permanently separated from Aaron? Will she ever see him again? How will anyone feed him now? (Was there a can of formula in that pallet drop?) And, speaking as a breastfeeding mother, won’t the poor girl be in a lot of pain soon, since she’ll still be producing milk but won’t have anyone to give it to?

Blooper or hint?
When Jack is lying on the bed in a towel at the beginning of his flashforward, there is no recognizable scar where the appendectomy scar should be. He gets up, and moves through most of the scenes with that towel pretty darn low, and there’s nothing. Not even a scratch. He bends down to pick up Aaron’s toy and there’s nothing on him. When he goes into the bathroom where Kate is taking a shower, he’s standing in front of the mirror and there is what appears to be a thin line running down his right side, but that could just be the outline of his muscles; it’s not clear (the mirror is pretty foggy). So… is the scar there? One would assume it would be pretty big, since Juliet wasn’t dealing with the most up-to-date medical equipment. If it’s missing, is it a production blooper? Or is it pointing to something bigger? Has Jack figured out a way to time travel, too? Is this show going to turn into one big ol’ time travellin’ extravaganza? In which case, this Jack isn’t the Jack who got the appendectomy? (I’m thinking it’s a production error, but hey, I need something meaty and conspiracy-like to end this one on.)

Next week: In the CTV preview, it looks like we might discover how the Oceanic Six were chosen. Keamy orders Sayid to tell him who exactly is on the island, as if he’s going to go and massacre them. But best of all… DESMOND IS BACK!!

UPDATE #1: Kristin mentioned in my comments that on another board, someone is saying the baseball game is from 2007. Could someone clarify this? I’m going by my husband’s brain on this one. The guy can’t remember to take the garbage out, but if you name any baseball player from any year, he can tell you every stat there is on them, and when they were traded, etc. (Same with golf... which is fitting, since he’s a golf writer.) When he saw the headline, he said that’s referring to the series referred to as the Boston massacre in 2006, where the Yankees creamed the Red Sox. Clearly the mention is a nod to Jack’s world returning to some normalcy, but it’s also a timeline indicator. I checked and there doesn’t seem to be a series where the two were head to head (and the Yankees won in such a big way) in 2007.

UPDATE #2: Ah, the glory of screencaps. :) Thanks to reader Syzlak, who pointed me in the direction of the screencap of the newspaper Jack is reading. Turns out, the ball game that Jack is reading about is a subsequent series between the Sox and the Yankees... not the massacre, but a smaller version of that. This one happened in August 2007. So this poses a problem: Jack lost it and read the obituary in April 2007, yet that clearly happened AFTER this flashback. Did the props department screw up yet again? Looks like.

Secondly, as I suspected in my summary, Jack does appear to have a scar when you look in the bathroom mirror. But why don’t we see it when he’s tooling around the kitchen? You can see that part of his body pretty clearly. Could it just be the light not hitting it right? Or the towel being up too high, perhaps?

Thirdly, this is my post #423... the numbers!! Overlapping! (Yes, I am aware of my dire need of a life....)

UPDATE #3: Me again! A few people have emailed me to say that Sawyer could very well be dead by the time Kate is talking to Jack, and that is true. What I meant by my excited comment is that this is the first indication we have that the Oceanic Six were not the only survivors. Up until now, we’ve speculated that they were rescued and the others were left behind, but there was also the possibility that there was a massacre, and the Oceanic Six were the only survivors. Kate talking about Sawyer like he was alive when they left gives us hope that all of them – including Jin – are still alive out there somewhere. And it means we can have flashforwards of the non-Oceanic Six after the rescue, showing how their life on the island continued. It opened up a whole world of possibilities, and I thought it was a key moment in the dialogue.